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The Top 10 Medical Advances of the Decade
The first decade of the 21st Century brought a number of discoveries, mistakes, and medical advances that have influenced medicine from the patient's bedside to the medicine cabinet.
In some cases these advances changed deep-seated beliefs in medicine; in others, they opened up possibilities beyond what doctors thought was possible years ago.
ABC News, in collaboration with MedPage Today reached out to more than 800 specialists as well as a distinguished panel of medical historians to put together a top 10 list of medical advances one decade into this century.
Hospitals help halt Medicare buy-in plan, Washington Post reports
An article in today's Washington Post credits the AHA and its hospital members with helping to kill "in a mere six days" a proposal to include a Medicare buy-in provision in the Senate health reform bill. The proposed Medicare expansion, which emerged as senators negotiated the bill last week, would have allowed adults age 55-64 to buy into the program as part of a public health insurance option. Aided by the AHA, hospital leaders quickly urged their representatives to reject the plan, which could hamper hospitals' ability to maintain essential services because Medicare pays less than the cost of care.
House passes bill delaying physician payment cut
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 395-34 today to approve a fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill that includes a provision delaying Medicare physician payment cuts until March 2010. Without congressional action, physicians face a 21% payment cut on Jan. 1 under the current Medicare physician fee schedule. The measure now moves to the Senate, which failed last month to advance a separate bill (S. 1776) to permanently fix the physician pay formula after opponents argued it would have added to the federal deficit.
20 Healthcare Advances
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| 1. Nearly 62% of U.S. adults said they were in excellent or very good health, along with 82% of their children, according to the National Health Interview Survey. |
| 2. Fewer Americans died in traffic fatalities in 2008 than in any year since 1961, and fewer were injured than in any year since 1988. |
| 3. Life expectancy in the U.S. reached an all-time high of 77.9 years in 2007, continuing a long upward trend. |
| 4. Death rates dropped significantly for eight of the 15 leading causes of death in the U.S., including cancer, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, accidents, diabetes, homicides and pneumonia, from 2006 to 2007. |
| 5. The death rate from coronary heart disease dropped 34% from 1995 to 2005. Deaths from stroke dropped 29% since 1999. |
| 6. The death rate from cancer, the second-biggest killer, dropped 16% from 1990 to 2006. |
| 7. Nearly 40% of U.S. adults have never had a permanent tooth extracted because of dental cavities or periodontal disease in 2004, compared with 30% in 1994. |
| 8. Three out of 10 U.S. schoolchildren aged 5 to 17 in 2007 did not miss a single day of school because of illness or injury during the preceding 12 months. |
| 9. Hip fractures—which can rob elderly patients of their mobility forever—are down nearly 30% in the U.S. and Canada since 1985, for reasons not completely understood. |
| 10. Thanks in part to vaccines, the rate of acute viral hepatitis A dropped 90% between 1995 and 2006, and acute viral hepatitis B dropped 88% from 1982 to 2006, both to record lows. Acute viral hepatitis C is down to 0.03 from 2.4 cases per 100,000 since 1992, though rates have recently plateaued. |
| 10. Thanks largely to antiretroviral drugs, U.S. deaths from AIDS dropped 10% from 2006 to 2007, the biggest decline since 1998, and they remain well below the 1995 peak. |
| 12. The proportion of undernourished children world-wide under five years of age declined to 20% in 2005 from 27% in 1990. |
| 13. The U.S. divorce rate dropped by one-third from 1981 to 2008, and is at its lowest level since 1970. |
| 14. From 2006 to 2008, the median percentage of U.S. secondary schools that don't sell soda rose to 64% from 38%, and those that don't sell candy or high-fat snacks rose to 64% from 46%, in the 35 states that collect data. |
| 15. Around the world, 27% fewer children died before their fifth birthday in 2007 than in 1990, due to greater use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets, better rehydration for diarrhea, and better access to clean water, sanitation and vaccines. |
| 16. The amount of trans fats in packaged food has declined by about 50% since 2006, when the Food and Drug Administration began requiring food labels to list it. |
| 17. Twenty-seven countries reported a reduction of up to 50% in the number of malaria cases between 1990 and 2006. |
| 18. As of this month, 71% of the U.S. population lives under either a state or local ban on smoking in workplaces and/or restaurants and/or bars, and 19 states have banned smoking in all three kinds of places. |
| 19. Experts have found that some of the best things you can do for your own health are simple and free: Getting adequate sleep can help you lose weight, fight infections, recall memories and think more clearly. Spending just 30 minutes a day in the sunlight to soak up vitamin D across a broad swath of the country can reduce your risk for a variety of cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and many other diseases. Volunteering to help others can lower your risk for depression and heart disease, raise your self-esteem and happiness and extend your life, according to numerous studies. |
| 20. The longer you live, the happier you are likely to be. Many older adults find that happiness and emotional well-being improve with time; they learn to avoid or limit stressful situations and are less likely to let negative comments or criticism bother them than young adults, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association conference in Toronto this year. |
| Source: Wall Street Journal |
Rehab Improves Attention Deficits in Stroke Survivors
LITTLE FALLS, N.J., July 24 -- A rehabilitation program for impaired attention was successful in patients who had suffered a stroke, a randomized trial showed.
Compared with patients who received standard post-stroke care, those who underwent attention process training had significantly greater gains on a measure of attention at six months (P=0.0004), according to Suzanne Barker-Collo, PhD, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and colleagues.
The 'Best Hospitals' for 2009
U.S. News & World Report |
| 1. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore |
| 2. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. |
| 3. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles |
| 4. Cleveland Clinic |
| 5. Massachusetts General, Boston |
| 6. New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell |
| 7. University of California-San Francisco Medical Center |
| 8. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia |
| 9. Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University, St. Louis |
| 10. Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston |
| 10. Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C. |
| 12. University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle |
| 13. UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center |
| 14. University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Ann Arbor |
| 15. Stanford Hospital and Clinics, Stanford, Calif. |
| 16. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn. |
| 17. New York University Medical Center |
| 18. Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Conn. |
| 19. Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York |
| 20. Methodist Hospital, Houston |
| 21. Ohio State University Hospital, Columbus |
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